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Day #169: The ABCs of Death (2012)

[From IMDb:] A 26-chapter anthology that showcases death in all its vicious wonder and brutal beauty.

My take:

I grew up sneakily watching Eat Carpet, which is where I think my appreciation for short films might have come from. It also means that I’m used to weird short films, which was more useful than I would have expected when going into The ABCs of Death.

While I love the concept behind this anthology, I can’t say that I loved the outcome. Overall, I think there was too heavy a reliance on biological functions and cheap body horror in place of concepts that had actually been carefully thought out. Thankfully though, this wasn’t true of all of the shorts.

Here are some of the stand-outs for me, both for good and bad:

Likes:

A is for Apocalypse: There are certainly worse ways to open a show.

N is for Nuptials: Sweet, cute, and funny.

Q is for Quack: Self-referential wit, for the win!

T is for Toilet: Creative claymation goes a long way toward making up for more poo jokes.

V is for Vagitus: Robots, man! Robots. Also, arguably one of the highest quality productions.

X is for XXL: Well, you can’t say that it didn’t get its message across. Also, maybe if you ever feel the need to belittle a person for being fat (or for any reason, really), you should STFU instead. Just sayin’.

Dislikes:

D is for Dogfight: I don’t care how good it looked, or what happened in the end, you beat up a dog. I don’t like it when animals are used as an easy target of abuse in other movies, and I don’t like it here.

F is for Fart: What the flying fuck.

P is for Pressure: I was actually prepared to put this one on the Likes list until the end, because, while it might not have been the most polished short, at least it was dealing with a real life scenario. Then you know what happened and, NOPE, fuck you.

Incidentally, there are exactly two videos that I’ve come across on the internet that have ever made me physically sick; and this short hit on the content of one of them. I was a lot less likely to click on random links after that.

I’ve heard/read some good things about the second one, so I’m hopeful that it’s a bit more…developed/mature in its execution. I don’t even necessarily care if it’s just more bodily fluids/functions, as long as there’s some more thought put into how to engage with that material.